A former paralegal told Florida investigators that workers at a law firm that processed foreclosures signed paperwork without reading it, misdated records and skirted rules protecting homeowners in the military.

Tammie Lou Kapusta, who said she spent more than a year at the Law Offices of David J. Stern PA, made the accusations in a Sept. 22 interview with lawyers for Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum. In August, McCollum announced a probe of three law firms to see whether improper documents were created and filed with state courts to hasten the foreclosure process.

Jeffery Tew, a lawyer for the Stern firm, denied Kapusta’s claims.

Kapusta, who spoke under oath, said the Stern firm ballooned from 225 employees when she started in March 2008, to more than 1,100 when she was fired in July 2009. She described a disorganized workplace where documents got lost and mortgages were misfiled. The training process was “stupid and ridiculous,” she said.

“There were a lot of young kids working up there who really didn’t pay attention to what they were doing,” she said, according to a transcript. “We had a lot of people that were hired in the firm that were just hired as warm bodies.”

Kapusta’s statements were reported Oct. 7 in the Tampa Tribune. Tew, of Tew Cardenas LLP in Miami, said he wasn’t aware of the interview until it was released to the public.

“We didn’t get a chance to cross-examine her,” he said. “It was a one-sided statement by a disgruntled employee. There was a lot of animus and personal references, and she seeks to besmirch people’s reputation. The law firm denies there’s any accuracy in the charges.”

Jurisdiction Challenged

There’s a court hearing set for Oct. 12 to determine whether McCollum’s office has jurisdiction over the firm’s conduct, Tew said.

“This is a civil investigation, and the attorney general hasn’t made any conclusions,” Tew said.

1 P R O C E E D I N G S
2 – – –
3 Deposition taken before Kalandra Smith, Court
4 Reporter and Notary Public in and for the State of
5 Florida at Large, in the above cause.
6 – – –
7 THERE UPON:
8 TAMMIE LOU KAPUSTA
9 having been first duly sworn or affirmed, was examined
10 and testified as follows:

1 Q Let’s go to the assignments of mortgage. They
2 were prepared in-house?
3 A Yeah.
4 Q You’re smiling. You want to tell me about
5 them?
6 A Assignments were done sometimes after the
7 final judgement was entered.
8 Q Do you know why that is?
9 A Because that’s what we were directed to do

19 Q Can you tell me the execution of the
20 assignments, how it worked?
21 A Assignments were prepared again from the
22 casesum. All of our stuff comes from the casesum. They
23 would be stamped and signed by a notary or not. Per
24 floor we had a designated spot to place them and Cheryl
25 would come once a day and sign them.
22
1 Q Sign them as what?
2 A As –
3 Q For the bank?
4 A Correct.
5 Q Or for MERS or whoever it was for?
6 A Correct.
7 Q Would these notaries be there watching her as
8 she signed?
9 A No.
10 Q She would just sit there and sign stacks of
11 them?
12 A Correct. As far as notaries go in the firm I
13 don’t think any notary actually used their own notary
14 stamp. The team used them.
15 Q There were just stamps around?
16 A Yes.
17 Q And you actually saw that?
18 A I was part of that.
19 Q You did it? Are you a notary?
20 A No, I’m not.
21 Q Did you sign as a witness?
22 A I did not. I signed as a witness on one
23 document and after that I decided that I didn’t want to
24 put my name as a witness anymore.
25 Q Tell me about the stamps. You stamped them?
23
1 A Yeah, I had stamps. Each team had a notary on
2 them or notaries that I was aware of. Whether they were
3 or weren’t wasn’t –
4 Q You had stamps?
5 A Correct. We would stamp them and they would
6 get signed.
7 Q Stamp them in blanks?
8 A Yes.
9 Q Who would sign them?
10 A Other people on the team that could sign the
11 signature of the person or just a check on there or
12 whatever.
13 Q Was that common practice?
14 A Yes.
15 Q Was that standard practice?
16 A Pretty much.
17 Q What about the witnesses?
18 A Those would be signed by juniors who were –
19 Q Standing there?
20 A Here, sign this. It has to go to Cheryl, sign
21 it. Then it would go and sit at the desk where Cheryl
22 would sign everything.
23 Q Out of view of the notary and out of view of
24 the witnesses?
25 A Correct.
24
1 Q Do you know who implemented this procedure?
2 A Cheryl.
3 Q Cheryl did?
4 A Um-hum.
5 Q Did anybody else sign with the firm for the
6 banks?
7 A Yes.
8 Q Who was that?
9 A There were people that were responsible for
10 signing Cheryl’s name. Cheryl, Tammie Sweat, and Beth
11 Cerni. Those were the only three people that could sign
12 Cheryl’s name. If you ever look at assignments you’ll
13 see that they are not all the same.
14 MS. EDWARDS: What are the names again?
15 Cheryl, Tammie?
16 THE WITNESS: Tammie Sweat and Beth Cerni.
17 MS. EDWARDS: Could you spell that.
18 MS. CLARKSON: C-E-R-N-I.
19 BY MS. CLARKSON:
20 Q Did they practice Cheryl’s signature?
21 A I would assume so.
22 Q Did you ever see them?
23 A Not practicing but I’ve seen them sign it.
24 Q Did you see somebody sign Cheryl’s name?
25 A Yes.
25
1 Q That wasn’t Cheryl?
2 A Yes. All the time.
3 Q Did Cheryl know about this?
4 A Yes.
5 Q Was it at her direction?
6 A Yes.

16 Q Did anyone quit as far as you know due to the
17 practices?
18 A I’m sure but they wouldn’t come right out and
19 say I quit because of the practices. I know that people
20 had left because they were uncomfortable with the things
21 that they were being asked to do, as most of us were.
22 When it got really sticky there were a lot of us that
23 weren’t here.
24 Q What does really sticky mean?
25 A They wanted us to start changing the documents
33
1 and stuff and doing stuff that we weren’t supposed to be
2 doing as far as service.
3 Q What documents did they want you to change?
4 A Manpower documents. A lot of judges started
5 requiring, because of the Jane and John Doe issues,
6 required that you have a military search for all the
7 defendants. If you named a Jane and John Doe as an NKA
8 you had to pull a military search on them. Unless you
9 have somebody’s social security number technically you
10 can’t pull a military search supposedly.
11 The program that we used for the program that
12 we used, you could put in the main defendant’s social
13 security and John or Jane Doe’s name and it would give
14 us a military search saying that they were in the
15 military.
16 Q You would get their social security number
17 because the bank documents contained it?
18 A Correct. The lenders, the referrals had the
19 socials.
20 Q Did you put the social in on everybody to find
21 out their address for service?
22 A Not everybody. I personally did not do it
23 because I refused to do it. I wasn’t going to falsify a
24 military document. I was told that that’s fine,
25 somebody else on your team will do it.
1 Q What do you mean falsify a military document?
2 A Well, I’m using the main defendant’s social
3 security number on somebody else’s name, not his name.
4 John Doe and the main defendant was James, I was taking
5 James’ social security number and putting John Doe’s
6 name in there. I wasn’t but that’s what the practice
7 was. The judges started saying we’re not going to
8 consider service completed until –
9 Q There’s a miliary search?
10 A Correct.
11 Q So why wouldn’t they use the right social
12 security number for the right person?
13 A Because you don’t have a social for an NKA or
14 unknown tenant. They wouldn’t enter a final judgement
15 unless the military doc was there.
16 Q So you just used anybody’s?
17 A Correct.

9 A So what we had to do from that point, again
10 the affidavits were still split in two pages, at that
11 point we were supposed to be sending them back to the
12 banks to be signed now. The problem being that a lot of
13 times we wouldn’t get them back or executed in time for
14 the hearings. So we had what they called signature
15 pages that Tammie Sweat or someone else would have in
16 their possession. If we couldn’t get it back from the
17 bank executed in time we would just take a signature
18 page and put it on the affidavit.
19 Q What was on the signature page?
20 A The signature and notary from the bank.
21 Q Were these documents photocopied or were they
22 original documents?
23 A Some were photocopied.
24 Q How would you get that many from a bank
25 original? The bank supplied them to you.
42
1 A Well, what would happen would be like if I had
2 file A and that one didn’t go to hearing because there
3 was something wrong with it and file B was going to
4 hearing but it was the same bank, I would take the
5 signature page from A and give it to B.
6 Q Oh give it to another file?
7 A And just re-execute this file.
8 Q Okay. That was common practice?
9 A Yes, after Cheryl couldn’t sign.
10 Q Did Cheryl know?
11 A Yes.
12 Q Cheryl knew about all the practices because
13 she is the one who ran the office?
14 A She was the one who implemented them.
15 Q Were there any other activities or practices
16 over at David Stern’s firm that made you feel
17 uncomfortable or that you were unwilling to do?
18 A I don’t know how to answer that question.
19 It’s a loaded one.
20 Q Take your time.
21 A Yeah. Some of the things that were done there
22 just were not on the up and up.
23 Q Explain to me in as much detail as you can
24 what those things were.
25 A I don’t even know where to start with it.